Income Inequity should Drive Education Reform

Just read this piece in the Atlantic ("Better Schools Won't Fix America" by Nick Hanauer) and it sounds like some rich people may finally be getting the right idea about which comes first, the cart or the horse. Rather than opening charter schools and increasing teacher accountability and student testing, I've been arguing for years that you lead with economic policies rather than educational policies (see blog post here, book review here, blog on lack of STEM crisis here).

image from the Atlantic article

Great quotes from the article:

"We have confused a symptom—educational inequality—with the underlying disease: economic inequality. Schooling may boost the prospects of individual workers, but it doesn’t change the core problem, which is that the bottom 90 percent is divvying up a shrinking share of the national wealth."

"...multiple studies have found that only about 20 percent of student outcomes can be attributed to schooling, whereas about 60 percent are explained by family circumstances—most significantly, income. Now consider that, nationwide, just over half of today’s public-school students qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches, up from 38 percent in 2000. Surely if American students are lagging in the literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills our modern economy demands, household income deserves most of the blame—not teachers or their unions."

"The job categories that are growing fastest, moreover, don’t generally require a college diploma, let alone a STEM degree. According to federal estimates, four of the five occupational categories projected to add the most jobs to the economy over the next five years are among the lowest-paying jobs: “food preparation and serving” ($19,130 in average annual earnings), “personal care and service” ($21,260), “sales and related” ($25,360), and “health-care support” ($26,440)."